So, here we have YouTube v11.45 – What’s new?

YouTube v11.45 is available to android users since November 19, 2016. Not many things has changed within the app, but there are some new cool features to see outside of it if you’re running on a device that supports either round launcher icons or app shortcuts. But that’s not all there is, an analysis of the APK reveals some new details about features coming to YouTube in the future, maybe this new features will be arriving sooner that we thought.

The “new” icon

You may have this “new” icon before, depending on how much time you have being a YouTube mobile app user, of course. YouTube brought back the round icon right from YouTube v11.29 just in case you’ve installed one of the right versions on a device supporting app shortcuts. The new icon can be described as a white circle with the classic roundly shaped rectangle with a triangle inside of it, because of this new/old look some users were complaining because it can be simpler and even cleaner.

About the new app shortcuts

There are three new app shortcuts that were added, two of them with some new cool features, the third one is arguably the lesser useful shortcut compared to the other ones. So the first two shortcuts are link that go into tabs located on the main YouTube interface, these are Trending and Subscriptions, which are okay if you usually spend a lot more time in those tabs instead of the (usually) more frequent home screen. The third shortcut has the function of immediately open the search interface in the YouTubeapp. Not that useful really, I must say, but it could be if you really need to look any other video and you don’t want to get distracted by other YouTube suggestions.

One step at the time

In recent analyses of the app code, some ‘secret’ new features has been discovered and some of them hasn’t even been teased before, so, that make us think that the YouTubeApp might be getting some steps into the right direction, because –as you probably know— a couple of new features always adds some personality, and that could bring a ‘refreshing’ touch to the mobile users experience. One of the aforementioned features is the ‘Fast Forward’ (which, if you think about it, it’s really surprising we haven’t seen before). It’s well-known that the YouTube Dev team has been experimenting with different interfaces and various paths to give the user the possibility to quickly move through videos with precision and ease, in their obviously constant effort to replace the seeking bar jumping, with an evidence that has been even more abundant since YouTube v11.41.

Bringing some friends to the ‘party’

Also, there are others things they are (apparently) planning to add to the app, like: a ‘Dance Party video filter’ for the video uploads, I’m thinking about it like an instagram filter or something, a ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ integration of some kind, which is already approved by me with all my heart, but just in case you don’t know what that means, it’s simple, if you are looking in to movie (or maybe any other video content that can be reviewed), you’ll soon see the Rotten Tomatoes scores and logo, somewhere on the screen, or maybe floating around. Among other things they could possibly be giving a little more sugar to the broadcast fans out there, with the live streaming and stuff. So, hopefully, we will see some of those amazing features rolling out in the near future, if we’re lucky enough.